Saturday, February 06, 2010

The Mark of the Beast

February 5, 2010

Because both of my sons were playing in the pep band, we went to the high school basketball game last night (we got beat). They were also having a spaghetti dinner fundraiser in the cafeteria, so we went early and hung out with friends. We really only caught the last half of the basketball game.

When we paid for our tickets, they stamped our hand. It's a little circle with OHS (for Oxford High School; or SHO, for Super Huge Orgasms) on it on the back of my right hand. (Super Huge Orgasms, right hand? Oh, never mind).

It's funny how things can stick with you for most of your life, isn't it? When someone reacts strangely to something, adults or kids, you never really know what's going on in their heads. Maybe that's why fiction is so attractive. It adds some form and interpretation to thoughts and behaviors.

I can't get a hand stamped without thinking of the first time it happened. I must have been about 10. My brother, who is 7 years older, had gone of to college, at the University of Michigan. I went up to spend the weekend with him in the dorm. Among the various thing we did was go see the movie Tommy (once guesses my parents, who had banned the album from the house, did not realize their oldest son was taking their 10-year-old baby to see this film). We also saw The Four Musketeers that weekend, and it's possible that the 4M was the film in question. Anyway, I had my hand stamped. And in a panic, I tried to wipe it off, smearing it all over my hand.

Why?

My Sunday School Teacher at the time was very, very big on the book of Revelations and the Rapture and he was always talking about the "mark of the beast" and how the end of the world was coming and Jesus was going to physically take the saved, and if you had the mark of the beast on you--a tattoo of 666 on your forehead or, er, some sort of mark and/or tattoo on your hand--when Jesus came to take the good people to heaven, those of us with those marks would be left behind as the world went to hell. He promised all of us to never, ever let anyone tattoo a mark on our hand of forehead.

(No wonder people are so screwed up. Sometimes I think you should be licensed to interact with other human beings).

So, obviously, when I got my hand stamped for the movie, that's what I was thinking, that if Jesus came that night, RIGHT THEN!, we'd all be left behind. Yes, we were all DAMNED for being at that movie.

So although I don't flinch to have my hand stamped, that thought does always go through my head.

Sometimes it seems like a very small step from being that well-meaning, but strange (I haven't begun to tell stories about one of my aunts, though), to encouraging kids to blow themselves and others up in order to go to heaven. Just a little shove in one direction.

That's a great story. Heck, you ought to make it into a story. I wonder if hand stamping is somewhat recent. First time I encountered it was when I went to CBGB's in New York where you needed the stamp if you wanted to go outside for some air between bands.